David Cameron’s ‘chillaxing’ hobbies revealed in new biography
Prime minister spends weekends playing with a tennis machine called 'the Clegger' and singing karaoke, according to book
Putting our lives on the page
Alison Bechdel turned her relationship with her father into a bestselling memoir. Now it's her mother's turn. By Kira Cochrane
David Starkey: My family values
The historian talks about his family
My hero: Carlos Fuentes by Alberto Manguel and Liz Calder
'His death is very hard to believe. He loved living so much'
Alain Badiou: a life in writing
'So many people now don't know the joy of love. They know sexual pleasure, but we all know what Lacan said about sexual pleasure.' Interview by Stuart Jeffries
Word and image: my top 10 books on film
From Christopher Isherwood's 'limbo of mirror-images' to 'the projected film's best-kept secret', Michael Wood picks his favourite writing on cinema
The Buddhas of Bamiyan by Llewelyn Morgan – review
Samanth Subramanian on the Afghan sculptures destroyed after a millennium and a half
Thomas Becket, Warrior, Priest, Rebel, Victim by John Guy – review
Eamon Duffy on the murder in the cathedral
Itch: The Explosive Adventures of an Element Hunter by Simon Mayo – review
A mad scientist, a radioactive element … Simon Mayo's romp includes scientific knowhow and an amiable hero. By Tim Radford
The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan – review
Lucy Ellmann on a gritty debut novel
Sue Arnold’s audiobook choice – reviews
The Ration Book Olympics by Clare Balding, John Goodbody's History of the Olympics and Start the Car by David Lloyd
Life! Death! Prizes! by Stephen May – review
Shena Mackay on an examination of a messy family drama
How England Made the English by Harry Mount – review
Can national character really be read from the landscape, asks Alexandra Harris
Et cetera: non-fiction roundup – reviews
Dignity by Michael Rosen, The Shrink and the Sage by Julian Baggini and Antonia Macaro and iDisorder by Larry D Rosen, with Nancy A Cheever and L Mark Carrier
The Expo Files by Stieg Larsson– review
Michael Newton on an inspiring collection of anti-fascist journalism
The Server by Tim Parks – review
Tim Parks mingles secrets and lies with meditation. By Leo Robson
Selected Poems by Don Paterson – review
Ben Wilkinson on 20 years of essential reading
Debut crime fiction roundup – reviews
The Summer of Dead Toys by Antonio Hill, What Dies in Summer by Tom Wright, The Playdate by Louise Millar and Heart-Shaped Bruise by Tanya Byrne
The battle of the book reviews
Lionel Shriver: Professional critics are no more reliable than Amazon ratings, a study shows. So do we really need them?
Cannes film festival set to honour the bookworm
Coveted Palme d'Or likely to go to a screen adaptation, with many of this year's entrants borrowing from literature
Jane Lovering wins romantic novel of the year with first book
Alison Flood: Please Don't Stop The Music, offering an 'unexpected hero from a fresh new voice', pips The Kashmir Shawl by Rosie Thomas
Prestwich Book Festival aims to challenge the dominance of south Manchester
The festival has been set up to celebrate the authors and independent businesses that are thriving
Harry Potter and the order of the 60 scholars gets mixed initial reception
A St Andrews conference on the Harry Potter series as literary texts has not met with universal approval in the academic world
Wanted: your flash critique
Earlier this week we celebrated National Flash Fiction day by asking for our readers' flash novels. Now we're looking for your flash criticism
Poster poems: May
Billy Mills: Traditionally a season of poles and ribbons, May can be merry and romantic, or the month when 'love that smiled in April' turns false. We invite you, garlanded or otherwise, to post your poems
Before Watchmen: DC Comics publisher defends prequels
Dan DiDio says Watchmen prequels are a 'love letter' to Alan Moore's creation, as graphic novel's co-creator continues to censure the project
Gwendoline Riley: ‘The buck stops here… I’ve got bad blood’
Gwendoline Riley tells Elizabeth Day about her obsessive need to write, and why she'll never have children
Nights Out by Judith R Walkowitz – review
Matthew Sweet explores a demi-monde that's all but vanished
Under Every Leaf by William Beaver – review
Bernard Porter challenges a study of the British empire's spies
Dickens, Browning and Lear: what’s in a reputation?
Robert McCrum: The bicentenaries of three great Victorian writers underline the capricious nature of literary afterlives
Hitler and the Nazi Cult of Celebrity by Michael Munn – review
A ludicrous study of Hitler recasts the Führer as a precursor of Simon Cowell, writes Peter Conrad
Ernest Hemingway and the highs and lows of Paris
Sam Jordison: A Moveable Feast and In Our Time reveal that for the young Hemingway, Paris in the 1920s was filled with both happiness and suffering
In defence of self-help books
Alain de Botton: The ancient philosophers recognised we all need help navigating our lives – so what explains self-help books' decline in prestige?
10 book-apps that might change Julia Donaldson’s mind about Gruffalo apps
Author isn't keen on the idea, but perhaps if she saw what some developers have been doing... By Stuart Dredge